


no one else who i know how to be

by royalbees



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 14:13:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10810647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalbees/pseuds/royalbees
Summary: Eliot knows who he is: he's a killer, and a murderer, and the man who will make sure that Parker and Hardison live to be ninety years old.  He doesn't love right, maybe, but he loves well, and that'll have to be enough.





	no one else who i know how to be

_Eliot’s worked for Moreau for eight months before it comes up. The only reasonable response is a sniper; they can’t be connected personally, but people in the industry need to know that a certain politician took a bribe and didn’t make good. Example needs to be set, after all. Eliot takes care of it._

__

__

_He doesn't really think about it: can't see far away, so of course he needs the glasses for detailed work, but Damien gives him a look, amused and hot and greedy, when he sees Eliot._

_“You look nearly civilized,” he says, mildly._

_Eliot doesn't wear his glasses again._

_“I ain't civilized,” he says, when it comes up again. “No point pretending.” Sometimes that means he can't be sure of his aim: the thing is, that’s all right. People get spooked when someone does something they don’t expect. He picks up a reputation pretty quick: Spencer’s an animal, he uses his hands, likes to get up close. That’s fine. That’s all right. Moreau thinks it’s funny._

**** 

_He leaves._

_Things don’t get better._

_Not that he’d really expected them to, but he’d hoped, maybe: hoped that maybe Moreau had been like a fever, something that could be sweated through until it was out of you entirely. Not so. All right, then. He pulls himself together._

_Getting work on his own means he’s gotta look like his own man. The glasses help: he’s no one’s dog. He'll keep it that way. Safer, for everyone. Eliot speaks softly, comes in quiet, unarmed, doesn't carry a gun. Eventually, some corporate asshole calls him, hires him to babysit a bunch of crazies to steal the designs for his airplane. Fine. It'll be like herding cats; if the pay wasn't so good, Eliot wouldn't've bothered with the hassle._

**** 

Didn't really come up again until years later, when they'd finally settled into the new routine, the three of them, after Nate and Sophie had left. 

It was Saturday, after all, and Saturdays were the mornings he tested new recipes for the brewpub on Parker and Hardison. They had a running fight about the names of the dishes; it felt downright homey on the weekends. 

_("Thief Juice, yeah, Hardison, but what the hell does _lord of the wings_ even _mean_? They're _chicken wings_ , people want chicken, they don't want some nerd joke!"_

_"No, no," Parker had said, scribbling madly, "Dyno-wings! No, listen: dyno-mild or dyno- _mite_!" and held up a sketch of a t-rex for emphasis. She'd drawn its stubbly arms as tiny chicken wings, dripping sauce. Eliot had fought back the grin - it was the principle, damnit - while Hardison had crowed in triumph and planted a smacking, delighted kiss high on Parker's cheekbone.)_

So. Saturday. He'd let himself into their apartment, set the bags up in the kitchen. His contacts had been bugging him ever since the Brazilian juggler had thrown sand in his face a couple of days ago, but he'd just remembered that he had a spare pair of glasses in the emergency gym bag he kept in Hardison's hall closet. 

Parker came through the window fifteen minutes later, light and breezy in a white tank-top. She smelled like sweat and chocolate and milk. “Hardison?” Eliot asked, because she was in a good mood, comfortable enough to drape herself across his shoulder and watch the crepe batter, little bubbles working their way up along the edges. Lainey at the farmer’s market had fresh goat cheese; he’d picked up a basket of figs. Might as well use ‘em, keep ‘em from going to waste.

“Coming,” she said. “Ignore him, he’s fine, he didn’t even have to go through the vents, he got to go across the roof! He's bringing the fancy chocolate. Help me stretch?”

“I - what - make Hardison do it,” Eliot said, and turned off the burner, followed her to the mat in the living room. Caught her calf, easy as breathing. “I look like a yoga instructor to you, Parker?”

She sighed. Muscles in her face relaxed, slightly, and he said “tell me when,” and watched carefully to make sure he didn’t accidentally let her knee hyperextend.

“Not a yoga instructor, a librarian," she said. "I like those glasses.” 

Eliot didn’t _get_ it - Hardison got back and snorted when he saw them, like it didn't bother him. Like there wasn't anything wrong with it. Sure, there _wasn't_ \- Parker had asked him to help her stretch, and Eliot _hadn’t been looking_ , he’d been real fucking careful about watching Parker’s knee and her shoulder. He hadn’t been looking at the lean concavity of her stomach, hadn’t watched her thighs, hard and strong - well. He knew it wasn’t quite right, to do this to another man’s girl, to Hardison’s girl, even if that girl was _Parker_ , but hell, they’d always been a little -

See, all Hardison did was sniff, mock-angry, and say "Blatant favoritism, man, how come _I_ never get a massage, huh?" 

He wasn’t _stupid_.

Yeah, sure, Parker’d never been great with boundaries. They’d been twisted around each other for five years, saved each other’s lives a dozen times over, grown together like braided grape vines. Eliot knew what that did to people, knew that it didn’t mean anything at all and it meant everything, when you knew people that well. 

So he kept it light, said "I dated a physical therapist. She liked to make grown men cry, Hardison," because that was easier than saying _you should **care** , you should care when another man puts his hands on your girl, even if it's me, even if it's Parker_. 

Hardison shuddered theatrically, said "none of that nastiness on the weekend," and unpacked a laptop and a little drone painted yellow and black like a bee. He put them on their proper places in the bookshelf they used for Stuff (not the bookshelf that Parker used as a staircase up to the crawlspace in the ceiling) while Eliot tested the range of motion on Parker's right arm.

“Oh, hey, look, it's Clark Kent in his glasses today,” Hardison said, heading into the kitchen. "That clown got you _good_ , man, you oughtta stay over tonight." 

Eliot was about to take the bait - it hadn't been a clown so much as it'd been a juggler, a juggler who'd obviously had some training in a very specific (and particularly lethal) Brazilian knife-fighting technique. Eliot had been doing fine with the four knives in play until the juggler had thrown a handful of sand straight in his face, which meant he'd had to finish the fight _blind_ , and he'd like to see Hardison handle even one Brazilian knife-fighting juggler. Took in a breath to start, cause it promised at least half an hour of material, before he caught sight of Parker's face. She looked a little worried, a little hopeful. That was enough to - well. He couldn't say _no_ , not directly, not to Parker lookin' like that, so he didn't say anything at all.

And then he realized why Hardison was in the kitchen. “Get your hands outta my crepes!” Eliot hollered. He let Parker’s arm down, slow, because he’d seen the way her rig had tangled on her two weeks ago. Rotator cuff injuries could be serious; she hadn’t been complaining, but better safe than sorry, after all. 

He let himself stay, that night. Crashed on the couch. 

Eliot wasn't an idiot, but he _was_ weak in very specific ways, and - yeah. Spending the night, that was dumber'n shit. He _knew_ why it didn't bother Hardison when he walked in on Eliot and Parker all tangled up in each other, stretching; you'd have to be an idiot not to get it. People in Eliot's line of work didn't see the wrong side of thirty if they couldn't take a hint. 

The hell of it was that it would be _easy_ to let this good thing tip into - into something else. He didn't even fault Parker or Hardison for throwing out hints, leaving room: they were kids. Brave kids who’d been living in each other’s pockets for five years, doing the impossible, high on their own brilliance and the good they did, the wins they’d piled up. Made sense, sure; they probably thought that - that letting Eliot in even further, that could only make shit better. He knew that if he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t keep a lid on it, that one day (soon) Parker might jump on his back, and he might turn his head, and if he wanted to (if he let it happen) she might kiss his cheek, playful and ordinary like it was something she'd done a thousand times.

Sometimes he _wanted_. Course he did. Who wouldn't?

Sometimes (too often) when Hardison pulled off yet another impossible bit of wizardry, saved their lives and the adrenaline was pounding in his head to the rhythm of their names, he knew he could grab Hardison and pull him close, and instead of putting their foreheads together and pounding his back, he could kiss that man, just fuckin’ do it, kiss him the way he _deserved_ to be kissed for bein’ such a drama queen asshole _genius_ , and - and that was usually when Eliot shoved Hardison away, hard, got away from the temptation.

Well. It’d be all right for a minute, wouldn’t it? He’d seen the way Parker looked at him, sometimes. Caught Hardison watching once or twice. It’d be _fine_ , for a minute, mighty fine indeed. There was a way to kiss someone, fuck someone, that meant _thank god i found you_.

It probably wouldn’t go sour for a few months, at least.

He wasn't an _idiot_ , after all. It might only be a few months, but those few months before it went bad would be the best of his life. He knew it like he knew when to brace because Parker was about to jump on his shoulders, like he knew when Hardison was watching him on a security cam in the middle of a job. Something in the air, something fine and delicate. Yeah. He could - it could happen, sure. 

He’d promised Sophie, though. Said the words. _Til my dying day_ , and that was something he couldn’t risk throwing away just because Hardison had broad, clever fingers and a blinding smile, or because Parker’s thighs were lean and strong and perfect when she perched on the counter in the kitchen, watching him cook. 

*****

Couple weeks later, Eliot got that itchy feeling, so he called Ian and PK, old buddies he'd known since before he left the army, and they headed out to a shitkicker of a bar.

“What crawled up your ass and died?” said Ian, and PK squinted like an idiot and started yammering about gerbils, so Eliot kicked him under the table.

Later (six beers later) he tried to explain, because they’d seen combat, they got it, how dangerously addictive, how _simple_ that kind of shit started to sound after you’d been in the thick of it for a while.

“Had to get my head straight,” he said. “You know how it is, you’re with your guys and you’re on a hot run and you _know_ there’s no way you can make a mistake, everyone’s on fucking point, you got it dialed up to eleven and every guess is gonna be the right one?”

“In the _zone_ ,” PK crowed. “ _Fuck_ yeah, man, I loved that shit.”

“Never lasts.” Ian pointed with drunken focus, a couple inches to the right of Eliot’s face. "You start trusting that kind of luck and next thing you know you're scraping somebody's dog tags out of some wreck." 

“Five years lucky,” Eliot said. PK kicked him under the table, glaring, and knocked wood. Fair enough. That was _too_ lucky, really, definitely not to be trusted.

“Don’t say that shit out loud, man,” Ian said, and killed his beer. "You're on a hot streak, okay, fine, buy a lotto ticket, whatever. Don't go buying houses on that kinda luck."

They let it go, started arm wrestling for spare change, and sure enough the redhead from two tables over came by to cheer them on, and Eliot bought her a drink, and she wound up challenging and beating Ian, hard little biceps under her soft cardigan. Her name was Emily, and she was younger than him, piercings in her nose and ears, bright little drops of gold,and he had to do _something_ about those feelings, had to kill the sweet sense of _possibility_ in the air that hummed whenever he and Parker and Hardison wound up in the same room, lately. 

Emily smiled just as sharp and bright when she pulled Eliot’s shirt off as she had when she’d slammed Ian’s arm down on the table, and he let her push him down, climb on top, and then he didn’t have to think about anything at all, it was just bodies, just her pretty, tight nipples and smooth hot curve of her waist.

“Lemme make you breakfast,” Eliot said, the next morning. She’d laughed at him.

 _I can do this, he thought, it's fine, it's not so bad._


End file.
